


Cold

by LeoOtherLands



Series: All the Broken Pieces [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Akatsuki cult, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Being Lost, Demon Summoning, Depression, Despair, M/M, Porn With Plot, Rare Pairings, hopelessness, indifference
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-22
Updated: 2019-05-22
Packaged: 2020-03-09 20:09:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18924175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeoOtherLands/pseuds/LeoOtherLands
Summary: Nagato was chosen to be the demon's sacrifice so long ago he can't remember what it is to live anymore. All he knows is Time is coming nearer, and the phantom haunting his waking dreams poses questions for which there are no answers.





	Cold

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Saereneth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saereneth/gifts).



> Saereneth, I'm handing this one to you, as, for some reason, you say you're always excited for more of my smut... And because I now permanently have a smut, cat fart, CLAWS DON'T GO THERE, horrified Jack Sparrow gif, conversation stuck in my head. I wish this story was a bit better, it's mostly some rambles...
> 
> Which moves me on to other notes... I had no intention of writing this, but, as my Discord siblings won't stop giving me ideas (hisses), here it is. I should say I'm sorry (I really am still writing Crimson Lotus!), but I'm not going to. To be honest, over a space of a few days, when I haven't been feeling mentally well, this was good catharsis.
> 
> These are not words, they're only feelings  
> There are no sounds that you can hear  
> There is no form that you can touch  
> There are no colors for you to see  
> The only sound is a distant thunder  
> A tempest rages so far away from me  
> I walked for miles and I started running  
> Towards the sound and storm where you might find me  
> Towards the sound and storm where you might find me
> 
> And I ran until I had the feeling  
> That the tempest I had heard surrounded me  
> Here my heart so filled with loving  
> Cried out and told of wonders that I feel  
> Cried out and told of wonders that I feel
> 
> Because here my heart, so filled with loving  
> Crying out the wonders that I feel  
> Here I will find my true salvation  
> And my ways are bringing you to me...
> 
> [VNV Nation - Tempest](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHxKbvUNzq0)

Cold.

I shuddered at the chill in the air of the dark, stone room, and bit my lip, but dared not wrap my arms around my thin torso to hold back my shivers. Not with Tobi behind me. The masked man’s presence was the coldest thing in the room, permeating through the thin robes I wore. I could feel his single eye boring into my back, waiting for me to twitch or show the least sign of fear. Feel it like the crawl of his fingers over my flesh when the villagers had stood me, naked, in the groove with the other young men put forward as potential sacrifices.

How long ago I wondered, pressing my teeth into my lip further, to keep them from chattering. How long since I’d stood bare on the grass, with the long, unkempt wings of my red hair hanging in my face, hoping not to be noticed? So long I could not remember sunlight or picture anything but the benighted, winding ways of the cult’s underground labyrinth.

“Nagato.” Tobi’s voice was a whisper, dry and rustling and obscene, in the dead silence of the room. It played along my nerves and had me applying more force to my lip, until it split and blood rushed over my tongue. “You are so silent. What are you thinking?”

I flicked the blood from my lip with a trembling hand. Long, slim fingers pale in the dark. “Nothing, Tobi- _sama_.” _I was thinking of how your eye leered at me in the groove, while you held my head back by the hair and groped me._

The thought made me shift on my feet, head sinking forward with a little sound of… Distress? Sadness? Regret? I couldn’t tell which, if any, of those things prompted the slight sound from my throat. I could hardly remember what I’d felt, or what had motivated me when I was a living boy walking the ways of the world above.

It wasn’t as though Tobi, or any of the other _Akatsuki_ , had harmed me. They couldn’t. They needed a flawless, virgin sacrifice to satisfy their demon-god. Not one which was abused and defiled. The worst they’d done was take me and keep me, waiting on what they called Time.

Memory was useless. Only the current moment held material meaning. Tobi had brought me to his room, calling me to come listen to him on my knees, with my head bowed, then to follow, as he preceded me to this place I had never been allowed to enter before because Time was fast approaching.

I felt Tobi’s presence nestle closer against my back, his voice alive in my ear. “If you are thinking nothing, then show no hesitation. Touch it.”

Doing as told was singular habit, imposed on me by… So long in the dark with the _Akatsuki_ my own name felt strange, and I half wondered who it was that gave it to me. My hand reached out on its own to caress the stone, without a sound, but with a kind of distant sickness.

Cold. The altar was square. A single block, two meters long and one wide. Simple. Smooth. Unadorned, apart from the four horns, one at each corner, where I would be tied when Time came.

The satiny stone had almost a feeling of slickness to it. As if it were coated in blood. With something like a resigned, but deep, lurch, I realized it was. _My blood._ The blood I’d wiped from my lip lingering on my fingers to be spread over the surface of the altar, where the demon would claim me when Time came.

Cold. My blood seemed to freeze to the frigid stone, as if it were the source of the chill in the room. Yet, beneath that frightful frost, little, tingling shocks pulsed along my skin, raising hairs in a way reminiscent of the barest impression of lightning storms over grass-tossed plains.

Trembling, I wrenched my hand away, an action necessitated by the fact of my flesh clinging to the icy surface, and applied force to my lip, once again, raising fresh blood. Hoping Tobi would not misinterpret the action for my discomfiture. Or… Trepidation? No. My movement was not motivated by either of those, no more than it was by dread or repulsion. What prompted me to take back my hand was nothing more than cool certainty I would soon be lying there. And this left me with an emptiness I did not care to explain.

“Nagato.” Tobi shifted from behind me, bringing his masked face and single eye into my line of sight.

“ _Hai_ , Tobi- _sama_?” I was surprised my voice was not cracked. The emptiness left me feeling brittle.

Tobi skimmed his hands over the altar, without touching it. If he felt either the cold or the minute shocks, he gave no sign. His focus entirely on my petite, underclad body. “Here the demon will take your mortal form, then your life. Do you understand?”

I felt a clenching low down in myself. “ _Hai_ , Tobi- _sama_.”

“Do you feel yourself ready to be the sacrifice?”

“ _Hai_ , Tobi- _sama_.” My voice was slow and without hitch. My thoughts were not so. _What is ready? What is the alternative?_

Tobi scrutinized me, making me feel small, leaving me to question if he read through to my drifting thoughts. His voice said he did not. “Then go. We will call for you when it is time.”

I dropped into a fluid bow, before forcing myself to exit the cold room with slowness, in defiance of my muscles’ cry to hasten. Once in the near lightless hall, there was no need to hurry. There was no place to go, and little to do in the lair of the _Akatsuki_ , beside wait for Time.

Knowing this, I wandered aimlessly, mind distracted with Time and the freezing, tingling shock of the altar stone. My fingers were red and stung where they had left skin behind on the stone, and I felt tired, as if some of my life had been sapped away. In this state, I did not hear the small, whispery, gasping breathes until I was almost on top of their source.

A large man sat slumped against the wall. Hands resting, palms up, beside him, twitching gently. Head thrown back, hair long and thick over his shoulders and down his back, red trails tracing down his cheeks like blood tears. The light gasps were like sobs, as if he endured some worrisome agony.

“Ahh!” The exclamation was soft. More a thin gasp of my own than anything else. I had thought I knew every member of the _Akatsuki_ , but I had never seen this man before. “Pardon me.”

The eyes opened. They were red. Not merely reddened from weeping, but a brilliant fire, glowing crimson and patterned with _Tomoe_ marks. The expression on the face was so pained I could not help stepping toward him.

“Are you hurt?”

“No.” The voice had a long, hollow tone to it, but it was resonating and pretty, and it drew me. “I’m cold.”

I found myself kneeling beside him, not knowing how I’d got there, level with those strange eyes, facing a hunger, which penetrated me down to my soul. All I could think of was the cold of the altar room, though there was no real place which was warm in the underground warren.

“Then why are you sitting here…”

“Madara,” he intoned.

“Madara- _sama_ ,” I offered.

“Because this is where I find myself.”

I considered this, bemused by the ways of this enigmatic creature, even as he pondered me. Taking in my flaming hair and bare feet and scantly-clad figure, in robes so thin they covered nothing and left no mystery.

“Are you warm?”

“No, Madara- _sama_ ,” I admitted. But I so seldom was, I had learned to accept it.

The man before me did not seem inclined to do so. “We could be warm together,” he said, reaching for me. I didn’t flinch, trained to resist nothing. Even when he drew me unto his lap, I remained pliant.

He paused with our faces mere millimeters apart, his sweet breath playing over my senses. “Are you not afraid?”

“Why would I be afraid, Madara- _sama_?” I asked, real confusion coloring my voice.

“Most would be,” he rumbled, hands frigid on the skin of my hips, even through the cloth I wore.

“I am the demon’s sacrifice,” I said, casting my eyes down demurely. Overcome by a feeling I could not identify. “No one harms me here.”

He went still under me. Red eyes burning fiercer. “You are the demon’s sacrifice?”

“Yes, Madara- _sama_. I thought everyone knew that.”

“I have been gone a long time.” He said the words, then sagged, looking so pitiable I could not help but think of the only place I was ever warm.

“Come, Madara- _sama_ ,” I said, as he let me slide off him. “If you’re cold, we should get you to bed. Where is your room?”

“I don’t have a room.”

The words stopped me a moment on my hands and knees. They seemed so implausible, _everyone had a room_ , but I did not let the thought fill my mind for long. It did not matter, even if he was lying to me.

“Then we can use my room, Madara- _sama_.”

“Your bed.” He spoke the words as if it were some deep, marvelous thing he had never considered.

“ _Hai_ , Madara- _sama_.” I was less concerned with the words then I was other, more practical matters. Backing myself into the angle created by him and the wall, I wrapped one of his arms over my shoulders and one of my own around his waist. I was not strong. A mere sapling to his balk, but I persisted until I struggled to my feet and was bowed under his girth.

Panting, I shuffled forward, my burden a chilling block of ice pressed to my side. Silent at first, then nuzzling into my neck, as if for warmth, “Who are you?”

“Nagato,” I breathed. It was a rasp, near a rattle, but, “Nagato,” the way he said the word turned it to something else. Something lovely and to be savored. It shivered along my skin, and I was shuddering with it, and cold, by the time I reached my door.

It was no easy thing getting the door open, but it was done, and Madara was taking in the bareness of the room, the sparseness of the space occupied by a long bench, a low table with a few books stacked neat on its surface, and a wide bed, bundled thick with blankets. His red eyes lingered there most, as if carving the warmth promised by the coverings.

I managed to shift him to the mattress before crumbling to my knees beside it. It was a moment before I was recovered enough to realize I was being studied. I looked up to find the red glow of those unique eyes watching me. A different kind of craving in their fire.

“Come, Madara- _sama_ ,” I said with a strained sound, pressing a hand to the bed in an effort to level myself up. When I found my unsteady feet, I peeled back the layered blankets, swaddling him in them, as I had the impression I once had been in a place above ground.

But, when I tried to move away, he caught my hand. “You are cold too.”

Long instruction in following direction had me crawling into the bed beside him. Gasping as the cold, which had pressed against me as I carried him, embraced me. Even as he cradled me to his chest, I understood, though I thought I had learned to accept the cold, I had not known cold. If the altar stone conjured up vaguer notions of lightning storms, the man holding me woke ideas of sudden winter. Of frosted flowers and brilliant, resonating, crystalline radiance.

I closed my eyes against it, trying not to cry out or let the pain tears slip through my lashes. At least he was gentle, nuzzling into my neck again and breathing, “Nagato. You’re so warm.” And his voice was a moan, saying perhaps he wasn’t so cold anymore.

“ _Hai_ , Madara- _sama_.” My voice was a strain in my own ears, my teeth chattering. Caught in his arms, my hands in loose fists under my chin, I gave in to wracking shakes.

As if sensing my pain, my unexpected companion placed a comforting kiss on my forehead, the way… The way some unknown figure, my mind dubbed Name Giver, dredged up out of foggy past, once had. I stilled and frowned at this undenounced fragment, and Madara’s lips went elsewhere. Anything but comforting, as they skimmed over my neck and toyed over my collarbone.

“M-madara- _sama_.” The word was a stammer, as my body arched out under him and I experienced a strange sensation, I only half understood, on the beat of my own pulse. Then, his lips returned to my neck, opened on it, his tongue caressing my throat, and the sensation vanished. Drowned in a well of tiredness, which bubbled up to swamp me. Sagging, I lay limp, not minding the cold seeping into my skin in my numbing exhaustion.

I was roused by Madara twining his fingers with mine. Spreading them, so he could see them all. “You’re hurt,” he rumbled.

“Hmmm.” The drowsy sound was all I could manage, feeling no hurt, or much beyond his body on mine. Firm, but no longer cold, against my chilled frame.

Madara turned my fingers, so I could see the red painted across their prints.

A small groan escaped me. “I touched the altar stone,” I murmured, my eyes already slipping closed. To flutter open when Madara took my fingers into his mouth, his tongue swirling over them. Then I was asleep, and swimming in hazy dreams of dark mist and red, floating eyes.

When I woke the first time, my body was thawing, and I was alone. Madara evaporated like spring frost. I wanted to get up, but the hollow tiredness, which had gripped me, refused to let me go, and I dropped off again. The second time, Sasori had to wake me for the first time since I could still remember sunlight clearly. Still, his look of displeasure dissipated when he saw me fully.

“Are you not well?” he asked, tilting my face up.

“No, Sasori- _sama_. Only cold,” I assured him.

Yet, for the first time since I lost the idea of starlight and moonshine, he let me wear light, woolen warmers for my legs and a cloak, afraid I was becoming ill. I went through the span of waking blurrily happy, and reveling in the extra warmth, but also confused.

Madara seemed a phantom of dreams. I saw him nowhere and none of the _Akatsuki_ spoke of him. Still, I was sure he had been real. I spent much of my waking flexing my hand and remembering the swirl of his tongue over my fingertips. My torn skin had been healed. Proof my red-eyed companion existed.

I was drifting back to my room, reaching to open my door, when my name, spoken behind me, stopped me.

“Nagato.”

I turned to find Madara standing there, eyes dimming, but crimson all the same. “Madara- _sama_.” I took him in, arms wrapped around himself, shivering. “Are you cold again, Madara- _sama_?”

He shuddered, closed his eyes, and nodded.

He had not _asked_ me to warm him, and so I was not compelled to do it. And yet… My hand flexed, remembering the pain he had taken away, and I could not leave him cold in the hall.

“Come, Madara- _sama_ ,” I said, reaching for him. “We will be warm.”

Eyes open, eager, he took my hand and we went to my room. Inside, he tugged me to a stop before we made it into the bed. Frowning at the cloak and fingering it, he asked, “What is this?”

“A cloak, Madara- _sama_. I was cold.”

He unfastened the long sheath of fabric, so it fell away. “You are better without it.”

“ _Hai_ , Madara- _sama_ ,” I acquiesced, though I missed the warmth.

It was easier to bare the chill of his arms. Whether because Madara was warmer, or for some reason I didn’t know, it was not so painful as the time before. And Madara’s kisses were a scintillating distraction from the discomfort, seeming to prompt my body to produce heat from within, as it writhed under him, so I felt I was warmed from within and frozen from without. A contrast Madara appeared to enjoy. At least, it was sometime before his mouth opened over my neck and a second wave of tiredness pulled me down.

My waking was the same as the one preceding it. Late, and perpetrated by Sasori, who was adamant I wear the cloak. Though, I did not know why. I was not so cold as I had been, only eternally drowsy, so it was hard to keep awake.

Drowsy, and wondering. Once again, Madara was no where to be seen. Nor was he at my door when it came time to sleep. No. I did not see him until he appeared at the side of my bed, in the dark, eyes afire and my name drifting off his lips.

“Nagato.”

“M-madara- _sama_ ,” I whispered, opening my arms for him.

He crawled into me, claiming my neck with kisses, a hand tugging down a shoulder of my robe to glide over my chest. I whimpered at the added sensation, struggling at a building of pressure below my waist. Madara seemed to know it or be encouraged by my sounds. Hand exploring, teeth nipping, my name breathing out of him.

“Nagato, my Nagato.”

I wasn’t sure if I was lost first to fire or the ice of sleep. Body burning, but Madara’s final kiss opening on my neck and putting me to sleep all too soon. Afterward, I never saw Madara during a span of waking, but he spent each span of sleep with me. I would meet him outside my door, or he would crawl into my bed in the dark, or I would find him waiting there for me when I entered my room, rising from my bed to greet me, like a shadow with flaming eyes. Though waking became harder, due to my spans with Madara, I did not begrudge him the warmth I shared with him. Each time he held me, his cold seared me a small fraction less, and his kisses and caresses became familiar and anticipated.

My mind would wonder to them, as I struggled to stay above dreams in the span of waking. Wishing for those cold hands on my skin to ignite internal fires. All else dimmed to the dull monotony of the _Akatsuki’s_ underground den, but every time I opened my arms to Madara, he explored me a small amount more. His fingers turning my thin robes askew, his lips kissing further down my chest, his hands parting and working further up my legs before his last, deep inhalation of me put me to heavy sleep.

One span of sleep, panting and feebly thrashing under Madara’s darkened silhouette, his eyes twin, red lamps above me in his seamless face, his hands cupped my thighs, and all that held my robes to me was a thin band about my middle. I gasped and moaned through my attempts to gather air, and Madara’s mouth came down on my throat, deep in my suprasternal notch, as my hands crept around his back. His voice was a rumble against my fragile skin.

“Nagato, I love you, my Nagato. I want- I want to-”

His hand moved up my thigh, to grip on my hardened shaft, and my gasp turned to a mewing cry, as his hand started to move on me. My languid willingness left me. I had but the barest image of what Tobi meant when he said the demon would take my mortal form, pleasing himself with my body before taking my life, but I thought this was part of it. A piece of the thing I must not do until Time, and I revolted against it.

“M-madara- _sama_! Please!” I pushed against his shoulders, and he eased his movements, pulling back to watch me with his lamp like eyes.

“We can’t,” I murmured, even as my body betrayed me, moving on his hand. I whimpered at it, crying a little.

“Why not?” Brushing a finger over my face, his skin rasping on mine. “Your body wants to. Why not allow it?”

I needed to struggle back, to pull myself back to the pillows with what strength I had, to keep myself from doing so. There was a part of me which wondered if Madara would try to hold me, but his hands slipped off of me like regret, as he hunched there, eyes a bright, glowing crimson. I fumbled to pull my robes about me in s semblance of vanished modesty. Failing, I drew my knees to my chest and hid my face in them.

“My body… Belongs to the demon.”

“You would save yourself for him?” His voice was close to me, his fingers trailed through my hair.

My head arched up to meet his hand, seeking… Comfort? Something else? Something…

“I-”

“Why?”

Pain flared across me. Pain enough to spark cool tears from my eyes. I let them fall, and Madara didn’t wipe them away.

“You would let him rape you before taking everything you have to give.”

Blood on my lip. The tang and metal of it on my tongue, as my teeth bit down. “It… Is… What it is. It is my only use.”

“Use?” Madara’s voice was a hollow rumble, resonating down through the hollowness of me.

“Without it, I have no purpose.”

“But you do not want it.” His hand slid between my lower leg and my thigh, asking. My legs trembled.

“What… Is wanting?”

“I want you, my Nagato.”

But he did not force me. His kisses littered my hair, covered my face, his hands laid me down, but did nothing else, and I gave into him, my arms going up to grip on his shoulders. We could have this. They could not begrudge us this innocent affection. Lips on neck, cold on warm, until tiredness overcame me, and I molded to Madara.

Following, Madara did not let me forget his desire. His hands ever exploring, asking permission I did not give, swelling wanting rubbing against me. Each span of sleep became a variation on a repeating theme.

Once, when I was fighting against painful, misty dreams, and Madara had not met me, he crawled into bed with me. I was sprawled on my stomach, and he pinned my arms out wide to either side, bare thighs around me, long, hard swell of him sliding up and down over me, kisses working down the back of my neck.

Hazy and heavy with exhaustion, I wiggled slightly under him. Voice husky and muffled. “We mustn’t.”

Bulk pressing on me, teeth nipping at my ear, he whispered, “What is mustn’t?”

I groaned a little, grinding back onto him, even as an all too familiar roll of tiredness claimed me.

But each span of sleep left me considering.

_What is wanting? What is mustn’t? What is use, and why do we chase it?_

Walking the halls of the _Akatsuki_ labyrinth in my spans of waking, cloak hanging about me and steps slow, the questions persisted. Lingering against my best efforts to dispel them.

I was dozing, unintentionally, curled against a wall, red hair a mess, and falling in waves, cloak and robes carelessly draped over me, when Sasori roused me.

“Tobi wants you.”

“ _Hai_ , Sasori- _sama_ ,” I assented.

With his help, I was able to stand, only he didn’t bring me to Tobi’s room, but to the altar stone. Tobi stood beside it. His single eye examined me. He brushed some hair out of my face before he spoke.

“The time is near. Your next span of waking, you will be given to the demon.”

“ _Hai_ , Tobi- _sama_ ,” I murmured, hoping nothing in me gave me away. Hoping the sag of my body was invisible under the cloak.

Whether is was or not, Tobi dismissed me. “Go now, but hold yourself in readiness, Nagato.”

I bowed and left the chilled room.

_What is ready?_

Madara found me sitting on my bed, my knees drawn up and my arms about them. He ran a hand down my back and kissed my hair.

“My Nagato.”

When I didn’t respond, he paused. “What is it, my Nagato?”

“Time.”

“Time?”

I lifted my face to his caressing hand, his red eyes dim and steady. “This… Is our last span of sleep. Next span of waking, I will be given to the demon.”

Madara went still, eyes flaring a deep crimson. “You are afraid.”

“I… Don’t care for fear.” My voice was hardly there. A breath. “I… Care for wanting. I want you, Madara- _sama_.”

“Want me?” Madara questioned, hand sliding between my lower leg and thigh, once again.

Whimpering, I spread my legs for him. “Please.”

His hand whispered up my inner thigh, but he still had words. “You are no longer concerned what he will do to you when he discovers you are not virgin?”

“He’s going to take everything I am, and then my life. What more can he do to me?”

My head dropped, to rock back with a moan. Madara’s hand wrapped me whole and his lips parted mine. I was pushed back into the bedding and my robes tugged askew, heat coiling up in me from Madara’s movements on that part of me.

I writhed under him, my fingers seeking purchase on any part of his skin they could find. But I was not allowed to find a hold. Madara’s mouth worked down me. Teeth teasing, tasting nipples, tongue investigating, swirling over my belly. Removed only to moisten two fingers, which were thrusted into me so suddenly I bucked, clenching around him, making Madara thrum above me.

“Nagato, my Nagato.”

He slid the fingers in and out in time with his other motions, making me cry out, and I found my hips working, thrusting myself down onto those digits. Madara’s pleasure was evident. He quickened the pace, until I thought that coiling heat would burst in me, then stopped and drew his fingers out. Leaving me whimpering and wanting.

“Hush,” Madara soothed in my ear, and I felt that part of him I craved pressed up hard against me, pressed into me. It hurt, but it was passing. A transitory thing blocked out be the pleasure and the cold.

Because I was cold again. Cold as I had not been since Madara first wrapped his frigid arms around me for warmth. Shuddering, I was maneuvered upright, so I was sitting in Madara’s lap, legs splayed around him, my own weight dragging me down on him.

Madara’s hands gripped my hips, lifting me and dropping me unto him again and again, making my back arch, his cold spearing through me even while that heat continued to bubble and build in the center of me. Just when I thought I couldn’t hold it back any longer, Madara’s hand came between us to massage at my slit and jerk upward rhythmically. To push me past my limit and take everything from me.

I spilled over his fingers, clenching hard around him, back arching yet again, the hand not occupied with my member sliding up my spine to support me.

“Good, my Nagato,” he purred. His hips bucked up into me, once, twice, and I felt him trickle into me, spreading cold through me as the heat seeped out of me. Out of me, and into him.

Shivering, I collapsed onto him. A small sound escaped me. Too worn even to embrace him. “I… Wish I was yours, Madara- _sama_. I…  Want to be here with you, even if I’m cold forever.”

He gave no words of comfort, only his lips on my neck. Drooping, hair hanging, my chin resting on his shoulder, I smiled a little.

“M-madara- _sama_ …”

Tiredness. Madara’s mouth open on my throat, and cold all through me. Then sleep. Blank, smothering sleep.

It took Sasori to pull me back to waking. He had to help me from my bed and help me dress, but he said nothing as to my state. There was mild pain, but mostly my body felt weighted and slow. It was difficult to keep awake, as we made our way to the altar room. Sasori held me up, until it was Tobi’s arms around me.

The masked man was not unkind. His touch soft. “You are ready, Nagato?”

“ _Hai_ , Tobi- _sama_ ,” I murmured.

All of the _Akatsuki_ were there. Tobi removed my robes and laid me on the altar stone. Sasori, Deidara, Hidan, and Kakuzu spread out my limbs and secured them to the horns of the altar. I drifted through it. Half asleep. Even when Tobi tilted back my head, letting my hair fall away.

There was a knife in his hand. Long and slender and supple. He brushed it under my collar bone. Just a touch. Enough to draw blood and be drew back. My blood flowed, sluggish, to dribble down around my neck and pool on the stone.

And the demon came.

A dark cloud, a mist, so like the one in my uneasy dreams, billowed and flowed in shifting currents to cover me and the altar. It tinkled, resonated, but muffled all sound, as well, wrapping me in icy sheets. But floating in it were Madara’s eyes. Red and soft and well known and so like my dreams I thought I could cry.

“Nagato, my Nagato,” he said, arms coming around me.

“M-madara- _sama_ …”

His mouth came down on the wound, tongue swiping the blood away. His hard length pressed on my thigh, and I arched up into him.

“Nagato, I love you, my Nagato.”

Cold tears leaked out of my eyes, at last. Staining my face with patterned frost, as they froze. The ropes had been rough on my angles and wrists, but they slithered away, Madara’s arms lifting me, cradling me.

“Come with me, my Nagato. Come be with me forever.”

“W-want you, Madara- _sama_.”

Cold.

Cold like a blanket wrapped me round. Then Madara’s mouth opened on my neck, and all my tiredness dropped away in a wash of red eyes and darkness. My arms went round him and pressed him close. Welcoming his familiar hold.

So…

Warm.

**Author's Note:**

> It starts with one thing  
> I don't know why  
> It doesn't even matter how hard you try  
> Keep that in mind  
> I designed this rhyme  
> To explain in due time  
> All I know  
> Time is a valuable thing  
> Watch it fly by as the pendulum swings  
> Watch it count down to the end of the day  
> The clock ticks life away
> 
> It's so unreal  
> Didn't look out below  
> Watch the time go right out the window  
> Trying to hold on, but you didn't even know  
> Wasted it all just to watch you go  
> I kept everything inside  
> And even though I tried, it all fell apart  
> What it meant to me  
> Will eventually be a memory of a time when
> 
> I tried so hard  
> And got so far  
> But in the end  
> It doesn't even matter  
> I had to fall  
> To lose it all  
> But in the end  
> It doesn't even matter
> 
> One thing, I don't know why  
> It doesn't even matter how hard you try  
> Keep that in mind
> 
> [Linkin Park - In The End](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVTXPUF4Oz4)
> 
>  
> 
> I am an original fiction author and fan fiction writer who literally lives for comments, even if they are nothing but inarticulate vowel screams. Please give me comments people! I will literally beg for them!
> 
> This salty ball of words exists on a flotilla of social media. Feel free to friend me on Discord at LeoOtherland#7066,
> 
> Find me on Facebook on my [author page](https://www.facebook.com/LeoOtherland/) for all things original fiction, or in the [AO3 Armada group](https://www.facebook.com/groups/601270063618951) for all things fan fiction,
> 
> Or follow me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/RoseOfOtherLand) or [Tumbler](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/leootherlands)
> 
> I seldom post and/or tweet anything, but if you want to drop me a line, I am always up for a chat.


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